FutureForJames wrote:Zamte wrote:It's been an issue I've watched and been waiting to see the response to for years. Ever since they announced a (more) commercial game, I wondered how it'd be handled.
While I enjoy the gameplay that seatribe games bring, the truth is that it's kind of extreme for this sort of title. We're not even out of beta yet and already the game is hostile to newer players.
Defenses are insufficient to stop the high bile characters that can exist, and are apparently not hard to replace with the right foundation. This leaves you with literal titans walking around, only opposed by other players with the same strengths. The rest are left feeling like terribly dubbed Japanese citizens caught in the middle of a Godzilla movie. You're entirely inconsequential to them, but they'll kill you or step on your house if it amuses them enough.
I like the idea of a game where a sort of player-created society exists where everyone can build and modify the land, and the game itself. I like a game where criminal acts are allowed, but also capable of being punished. It's an interesting experiment and an interesting game. It's just not like that when you have characters roaming around who can smash down any barrier you put in their way, shrug off braziers, and commit any crime they like because they know only a quarter percent of the rest of the playerbase can stop them.
To be clear, I have no problem with criminals, or raiders. I have no problem with dying, or having my stuff smashed. I just have a problem with the stats being so out of whack. Research, hard work, and infrastructure should make you better, and it should give you an edge, but it shouldn't make you unstoppable to anybody who hasn't done the same. If these trends continue, I'm going to feel terrible for new players in the future who are up against behemoths walking around with thousands of biles, when they're still starting with five.
I think people are entering the game with the wrong mindset then. You can't be new to the game and at the same time expect to be able to properly defend your buildings against veterans alone. However, the keywords are "buildings" and "alone". You should store all valuable items that you cannot afford to lose, on alts. Furthermore, once your walls have been broken and crimes have been made on your property, you should contact correct veterans to deal with the issue.
This is a game where you have to think a lot; mostly about what other players can do and how you can use them. It is not a mindless themepark where you can afk in the middle of a forest and expect to be okay.
There is though another path to go for the game as a whole, and that is by using the "zone"-idea from eve to give "newbies" rather protected but inefficient places to grow on.
Oh I'm well aware of how the game plays. I played Haven & Hearth for multiple years. The key difference is though that in haven, things got limited a lot quicker. During world 3 we had rings get insane. People were running around with a few hundred points or better in their melee skill entirely from their rings. It was insane. World 4, they added a new ingredient to ring crafting which reined it in. Defensive capability and offensive capability have to grow at the same time, or else the game gets destructive.
Also, it has nothing to do with being alone. These characters have several hundred biles. Even with a dozen normal characters, you're going to be beating on them for ages before they go down, and they're capable of KOing you in a few attacks. Braziers don't matter, because of the way they scale down in individual damage as you add more, they're able to stand around for good periods of time without concern.
Offensive power has far surpassed defensive power, and it's caused a world where having high purity food and high biles means nobody can stop you without having the same. It's not easy for a new player to get the infrastructure going to develop those types of biles on their own, or even in a small group, because the main thing required is time. Time isn't something that's on your side with bored behemoths wandering around.
I think it was a mistake adding purity to foods before we had armor that actually soaks damage, real ranged weapons, and defenses which scale with purity.